The Children's Ward
by Rae Altaire
Summary: "If you do this, none of your past is going to remain hidden. Not Budapest. Not Osaka. Not the Children's Ward..."


_29 November 1987._

 _Minsk, Belarus_

"Make it a spectacle. Make sure they live in fear for the rest of their lives. Make sure no one will ever forget."

For a woman trained in the art of assassination and espionage, orders like that were strange to hear. Typically, she was a ghost. The perfect Russian doll, far to delicate and lovely to be considered as a suspect for a heinous crime undertaken in the dead of night. The Black Widow was meant to complete the mission, then fade back into the shadows leaving no one the wiser, not make a show.

But Natalia Romanova didn't question. Nor did she comment. It wasn't her place. She was simply a tool, a weapon carrying out a mission. She had no place in the world but where they sent her.

For the good of the Soviet Union, and everyone who had such luck as to live there, the Black Widow would make today one that no one would ever forget.

Glasnost, the General Secretary called it. The idea of openness. Tear down the iron wall. Let the Westerners in. Merge two cultures that had been kept carefully separated for so long. It was a disease, this Glasnost. A blight on their world. Natalia's superiors recognized that, even if the Soviet Government did not. They had taken it among themselves to solve the problem. To remind the world just how dangerous the bright idealism of Capitalism could be.

No one bothered Natalia as she entered the hospital. They saw her, certainly. Men staring openly at her curvaceous figure, often double taking, glancing back so they could behold her for but a moment longer. The women were much less obvious, but even they couldn't help but flick their gazes enviously in the direction of the crimson haired woman walking confidently past them.

Sometimes, being in the spotlight could have the same effect as hiding in the shadows. Walk amongst them as though she was truly one of them, and no one would ever suspect that she had anything to fear.

A misstep in a crowded hallway gave her the perfect angle to fall into a nurse. In the midst of the apologizes, the woman never felt Natalia's light fingers slip into her pocket and return with her keys. Not five minutes later, said keys granted the Widow access to the nurse's locker room, where she found a spare uniform tucked with an employee's belongings. When she was properly attired, Natalia finally made her way upstairs to her true destination.

The Children's Ward.

The facility was brand new, the ward only opened a week beforehand. All bought and paid for by American capitalism, a gift of high tech medical equipment and knowledge, for those who has been 'oppressed' by Soviet rule for so long. Save the children. What well played propaganda. The Belarusians had been warned against allowing the Americans in. But Ruslan Dashkevich, the minister in charge of the decision, had a daughter with terminal cancer, and desperate men rarely made the right decisions. Permission had been granted, and the ward was built.

Today came the reckoning. The cost of wrong choices.

Minister Dashkevich had admitted his daughter Maryia to the ward the day before. Despite all of his efforts to save her, he had simply changed the method of which she would die. From the slow demise of cancer, to the quick end of an assassin's bullet.

Natalia walked through the ward, steps quick and determined, never hesitating or deviating from her chosen path. The stolen uniform said she belonged there, but it was her demeanor that made the ruse come alive. Patients and visitors stepped out of her way, and other employees nodded greetings to her as though they'd known her all their lives. It helped that the ward was brand new, as the real nurses hadn't been together long enough to recognize a different face. She had memorized the ward's floor plan the previous night, so Natalia found Maryia's room exactly where she expected to, rapping her knuckles sharply on the door and entering immediately after, not bothering to wait for an invitation.

The room was small, yet cozy, fittingly appointed for the daughter of an important man. The bed and assembled chairs were covered with quilts and blankets undoubtedly brought from the child's home, and the tables were covered with keepsakes and fresh flowers. But none of that could hide the centerpiece of it all. A small, pale child, wasting away to nothing under a small mountain of coverings. The sight of her made Natalia's skin crawl, and it was then that it struck her that this killing would be a kindness, rather than the slow, torturous death already looming.

None of the disgust she felt inside made it to Natalia's face. The Black Widow was too well trained for such mistakes. Instead, she greeted the girl with a warm, beautiful smile, a sunny optimism put on display for the world to see.

"Good morning Maryia. Are you ready to go for your treatment?" It was phrased as a question, though both the woman and the girl knew that it wasn't. Maryia struggled to a sitting position with a mumbled greeting, while Natalia pulled out a wheelchair from the corner, rolling it over and moving the girl, who was still clearly half asleep, and getting her situated, fussing over the child and making sure she was comfortable.

It would have been simpler to do it in here, alone in the room with no one watching. It was how her instincts told her to carry out the hit. But Natalia stopped herself. Not yet. It wouldn't be a show unless she had an audience.

She was just about to wheel Maryia out of the room and into a more populated area when a vase of flowers caught her eyes. Red roses, just beginning to bloom. It was dangerous, stupid, and could compromise her mission, but in that moment Natalia didn't care, as she quickly slipped a rose from the vase and brought it with them, tucked in the back of the wheelchair.

She had always loved roses, though she could never quite seem to remember why.

No one commented on the young patient being pushed down the hallway. None of the other nurses called her on taking Maryia from her room. Even the child didn't notice when Natalia turned the wrong way, taking her to the entrance of the ward, rather than where her treatments would normally take place. It was time. Natalia could feel the adrenaline beginning to course through her veins in anticipation.

The Black Widow parked the wheelchair in the center of the hallway, releasing the handles and walking out in front of it. Maryia had realized something was wrong now, the girl looking up at her nurse, confusion written clearly across her face. She opened her mouth to ask, but Natalia didn't give her the time, pulling the gun hidden in the waistband of her uniform, setting the girl in her sights and pulling the trigger. One clean shot, right between the eyes. It took less than a second.

Then chaos broke.

The hallway was crowded, and even those who didn't see what had just occurred had heard the concussion of the bullet. It quickly became a stampede, everyone rushing towards the exit. Natalia didn't make it any easier for them, pulling the trigger every chance she got, making full use of the extra clips she'd hidden in her pockets. The Widow was an excellent shot, never wasting a bullet, a life fading with each blast.

She took special care to aim for the children.

Natalia didn't stop shooting until everyone was either gone or dead. The escapees were useful, survivors who would spread the story of what had happened today. That just left one mission parameter left to complete. The assassin pulled the American flag out from under her shirt, shaking the folded cloth open as she walked back over to Maryia, ruthlessly kicking the wheelchair over as she reached it, sending the girl's body sprawling onto the blood soaked ground. Natalia dropped the flag on top of it.

Let it be a warning for all, the answer to those who preached 'openness.'

Before she left, Natalia knelt down and picked up the rose. It had fallen from the chair, from that first shot or her kick, she didn't know which. She was more delicate to the soft bloom than she'd been with anyone else in the ward, her fingers tracing the petals, feeling the blood, though it was impossible to see against the rose's own deep hue. She lifted the bud to her nose, but it was pointless, the flower's sweet scent lost among the tang of iron. Natalia dropped it with a sigh.

She left the Children's Ward without a backward glance or even a care for the devastation she had just unleashed, joining the flood of hysterical hospital employees, running away with the crowd.

Natalia didn't care about the children. All she felt was a slight twinge in her heart at the thought of the rose. Killing children was easy. She'd already killed her own.

Mission complete.


End file.
